Introduction
Continuous and long-term use of chemical pesticides in
agriculture has led to: toxic residues, the appearance of
resistant pests and pathogens, environmental contaminations,
and negative impacts on non-target organisms
including humans (Cook and Baker 1988). Biological
control using microbial antagonists has been shown to
be a suitable ecologically-friendly candidate which could
replace chemical pesticides (Cook and Baker 1988). Different
fungal and bacterial antagonists have proved to
be potential biocontrol agents for controlling many plant
pathogenic fungi (Metcalf et al. 2004; Heydari and Pessarakli
2010; Sharifi et al. 2010; Francisco et al. 2011; Kakvan
et al. 2013; Naraghi et al. 2013; Blaszczyk et al. 2014; Khiyami
et al. 2014). In this regard, different species of Trichoderma
have been successfully used and have produced
promising results. For example, in a recent study, a different
Trichoderma species was used for controlling sugar
beet seedling damping-off disease (Kakvan et al. 2013).
In another recent study, isolates of Trichoderma spp. were
successfully used to control Botrytis cinerea on strawberry
(Naeimi and Zare 2014).